In The Lord of the Rings, in “A Part of the Tale of Aragorn and Arwen” (from Appendix A) we learn that Aragorn’s birth name was Estel, which means “hope” in Elvish (Sindarin specifically). But did you know that in Middle-earth, in Arda, and possibly the real world, there are two varieties of hope: estel and amdir?
(more…)Tag: fantasy
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With the third season of The Rings of Power coming later this year, Amazon is starting up its promo material. This—combined with ongoing political turmoil, war, and the powerful “charismatic” demagogues that make the real world worse than it needs to be—seems like the right time to talk about Sauron again. That is, Sauron the Third Wheel, as he is portrayed in Amazon’s adaptation.
Sauron in the books and in other adaptations is fairly clear cut: he’s terrifying, faceless, and evil, and had been evil since long before Elves and Men even awoke in Middle-earth. His time of moral ambiguity took place before time was measured.
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Okay, I’ve seen Masters of the Universe (MotU). Here are my initial thoughts not just as a fan of speculative fiction but as a big fan of He-Man since I was six years old. I’ll do my best to keep the spoilers light!
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I have been so busy with the logistical (and less fun) parts of finishing The Silmarillion Primer, and life in general, that I haven’t had time for very much else. But I’m here to say right now that it’s been killing me not discussing and anticipating the Master of the Universe movie. . . which I’m going to see for the first time later today with my wife and son. I’m excited.
I have the power! -
The Rings of Powers Season Three press release is out now. I’d like to comment on just one passage from it.
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Did you know? If you owned a particular book that came out in 2003 (23 years ago!), you would read that Wizards of the Coast proposed that you could potentially ride a gelatinous cube in your game. No one at the time, that I can recall, protested that WotC had therefore sanitized or spoiled Gary Gygax’s original vision for the gelatinous cube. If you can imagine that.
Ohh, right: This is a post specifically about Dungeons & Dragons and lore adjustments. It might not make much sense to anyone else outside the hobby.
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Here’s another installment about some of the things I learned about Tolkien and The Silmarillion by writing a book about it. This one is about how the vast spans of time in The Silmarillion are easy to overlook (and lead to assumptions), and about how no group in Tolkien’s legendarium is truly homogeneous.
read about things “uncomfortable, palpitating, and even gruesome” -
This is the blog post version of the talk I gave at the New York Tolkien Conference last summer (2025). It also revisits a few of the things I said in my Mythmoot talk from a few years before. But all in all, it’s about the writing of The Silmarillion Primer, a book which I promise is about to drop soon. Since it’s a bit long, I’ve made this just part 1. This one’s about the characters in The Silmarillion.
Read the doom that is written -
This might be hard to articulate, but I’m going to give it a try. It’s not complicated in itself, just complicated to convey, maybe.
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In the real world, what we in the Tolkien fandom call the primary world, Orcs are not a race. They’re a mindset, an ideology, the basest outlook of humanity. Tolkien certainly thought so.
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Foreshadowed and Foresung 